Developing Community Connections: Qualitative Research Regarding Framing Policies

The objective of this phase of research was to determine how Prevent Child Abuse America can effectively frame the organization's communications to advance a broad agenda of policies for children and families, including both policies that directly address maltreatment as well as policies less directly associated with maltreatment, such as early education, health, economic security, and family work issues. To that end, focus group participants were asked to review and respond to four articles, each designed to represent one of four frames: Child Abuse, Parenting, Child Development, and Community. In real news coverage these frames can, and do, overlap, but the research deliberately kept each frame distinct to attempt to isolate the effects of each frame on a proxy list of representative policies and programs. Nevertheless, some order effects were observed and these are noted where relevant in the analysis.This research analysis is part of our New FrameWorks Research on Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, and was conducted in collaboration with the FrameWorks Institute, and commissioned by Prevent Child Abuse America, with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Please visit our website for more information

Gender dimensions of child labor and street children in Brazil

The authors review child labor and the situation of street children in Brazil from a gender perspective. Relying primarily on Brazil's national household survey for 1996, the authors examine various dimensions of child labor by gender, including participation, intensity, and type of activities; the relationship between child labor, education, and future earnings; and the risks of child labor to health and well-being. They also summarize approaches to prevent and eliminate child labor and street children in Brazil. The authors find that more boys than girls work in Brazil especially in rural areas where boys are concentrated in the agricultural sector, that many children both work and attend school, and that girls attain higher levels of education than boys on average, even when considering number of hours worked. The exception is the 11-14 category. They also find that an individual's earnings are correlated with age of entry into the labor market. The earlier a child begins to work, the lower his or her earnings. And girls are more adversely affected by early labor force entry than boys, with the gender differential increasing the earlier a child begins to work. Taking poverty as the primary contributor to child labor, government programs to combat child labor are well designed in that they compensate families for a child's foregone earnings and address family factors that lead to poverty. However, programs could be improved by explicitly considering the gender dimensions of child labor. The authors point to the need for analysis of the impact of child labor on health, and specifically to the gender and sex-differentiated impacts. They suggest the need to address gender in intervention strategies for street children, as well as research on child labor in domestic service where girls are overrepresented.Children and Youth,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Gender and Development,Public Health Promotion,Street Children,Street Children,Youth and Governance,Children and Youth,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Adolescent Health

Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative

Noncustodial fathers have an essential role to play -- both financially and emotionally -- in the lives of their children. However, of the 11 million noncustodial fathers in the US, two thirds do not pay any formal child support. Many of these fathers are poor themselves and face multiple barriers, including low education levels, limited work experience, and criminal records, which impede their success in the labor market as well as their ability to provide for their children.Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative presents findings from P/PV's evaluation of Fathers at Work, a national demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, designed to help low-income noncustodial fathers increase their employment and earnings, become more involved in their children's lives, and provide them with more consistent financial support. The Fathers at Work programs offered a unique combination of job training and placement, child support and fatherhood services at six well-established community-based organizations in Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, CA; and Roanoke, VA. Our findings suggest that the programs produced important benefits for participants, including increased earnings and child support payment. The report details the specific strategies Fathers at Work programs used and explores the policy implications of this research

Child Welfare: An Overview of Federal Programs and Their Current Funding

Child welfare services are intended to prevent the abuse or neglect of children; ensure that children have safe, permanent homes; and promote the well-being of children and their families. As the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted, states have the primary obligation to ensure the welfare of children and their families. At the state level, the child welfare “system” consists of public child protection and child welfare workers, private child welfare and social service workers, state and local judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement personnel. These representatives of various state and local entities assume interrelated roles while carrying out child welfare activities, including investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect, providing services to families to ensure children’s safety in the home, removing children from their homes when that is necessary for their safety, supervising and administering payments for children placed in foster care, and ensuring permanency planning and regular case review for children in foster care. Most federal dollars dedicated to child welfare purposes are provided to state child welfare agencies, and federal involvement in child welfare is primarily tied to this financial assistance. In recent years, Congress has appropriated just above or below $8 billion in federal support dedicated to child welfare purposes. As a condition of receiving these foster care and other child welfare program funds, states must typically provide nonfederal funds of between 20Apart from the federal funding provided for programs described in this report, state child welfare agencies tap significant program resources—as much as$5.6 billion—from other federal funding streams, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), and Medicaid. These federal funding streams have federal statutory goals, or support activities, that overlap with child welfare purposes. However, they are not solely dedicated to child welfare purposes and states are not necessarily required to use them for those specific purposes. Neither do states need to meet federal requirements specific to the conduct of their child welfare programs as a condition of receiving this “nondedicated” funding. This report begins with a review of federal appropriations activity in FY2014 as it relates to child welfare programs, including the effect of the automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration. The bulk of the report provides a short description of each federal child welfare program, including its purpose and recent (FY2012-FY2014) funding levels

Discipline and Development: A Meta-Analysis of Public Perceptions of Parents, Parenting, Child Development and Child Abuse

This meta-analysis of opinion research is based on a review of PCA America's research on child abuse, as well as existing, publicly available opinion research regarding parenting, child development, child abuse and discipline, and the political landscape for child abuse prevention policies. The objective of this phase of research is to develop an understanding of the public beliefs that may influence policy support, with the ultimate goal of developing effective communications to advance policy.Since survey results can be skewed by the context of the survey (for example, a survey about balancing work and family will likely result in different assumptions about child care policy than a survey about welfare and poverty), the analysis relies primarily on research for which the entire survey was available. More than 100 surveys and focus group reports were reviewed (totaling thousands of public opinion questions). All surveys were conducted within the past six years, except for specific long-term trends.This report is not intended to represent a catalogue of all available data, nor is it a review of policy evaluation efforts. Rather, this analysis is designed to offer strategic insights that will prove useful to later stages of the research process; accordingly, only the most relevant and useful findings have been incorporated.This research analysis is part of New FrameWorks Research on Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, and was conducted in collaboration with the FrameWorks Institute, and commissioned by Prevent Child Abuse America, with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Please visit our website for more information

Quality Improvement for Well Child Care

Presented to the Faculty of University of Alaska Anchorage in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCEThe American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Bright Futures (BF) guidelines for well child care were designed to provide quality pediatric care. Adherence to AAP-BF guidelines improves: screenings, identification of developmental delay, immunization rates, and early identification of children with special healthcare needs. The current guideline set is comprehensive and includes thirty one well child exams, thirty three universal screening exams and one hundred seventeen selective screening exams. Many providers have difficulty meeting all guideline requirements and are at risk of committing Medicaid fraud if a well exam is coded and requirements are not met. The goal of this quality improvement project was to design open source and adaptable templates for each pediatric age group to improve provider adherence to the BF guidelines. A Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) quality improvement model was used to implement the project. Templates were created for ages twelve months to eighteen years and disseminated to a pilot clinic in Anchorage, Alaska. The providers were given pre-implementation and postimplementation surveys to determine the efficacy and usefulness of the templates. Templates were determined to be useful and efficient means in providing Bright Futures focused well child care. The templates are in the process of being disseminated on a large scale to assist other providers in meeting BF guideline requirements.Title Page / Table of Contents / List of Tables / List of Appendices / Abstract / Introduction / Background / Clinical Significance / Current Clinical Practice / Research Question / Literature Review / Framework: Evidence Based Practice Model/ Ethical Considerations and Institutional Review Board / Methods / Implementation Barriers / Findings / Discussion / Disseminatio

Early Years Developmental Journal

The Early Years Developmental Journal is based on extensive analysis of a wide range of developmental assessment tools. It is a resource for families and practitioners working closely with them to record a child’s developments to better aid the identification of areas where additional help may be required. It is designed to support key working and foster communication between all those involved in a child’s development. While its primary use is for families, it is also intended that the Journal will be a useful resource for the 24-30 month statutory EYFS progress assessment as well as supporting child health monitoring

Productive Safety Net Programme and Children’s Time Use between Work and Schooling in Ethiopia

Government, non-government and donor organisations have developed a social assistance programme known as the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) which has two subprogrammes, namely the Public Work Programme (PWP) and Direct Support Programme (DSP). PSNP is designed to reduce the vulnerability of poor people to drought. It targets households in most cases without considering ex ante the issue of intra-household resource distribution. This paper assesses, using Young Lives survey data, the impacts of PSNP and Agricultural Extension Programme (AEP) on time use between work and schooling, as well as the highest grade completed by 12-year-old children in rural and urban Ethiopia. Empirically the study used propensity score matching techniques to estimate the impact of PSNP and AEP on child welfare measured by time use in various types of work, schooling and studying. We found that PWP in rural areas increases child work for pay; reduces children’s time spent on child care, household chores and total hours spent on all kind of work combined; and increases girls spending on studying. The DSP in rural and urban areas reduces time children spent on paid and unpaid work, and increases the highest grade completed by boys in urban areas. On the other hand, AEP in rural areas was effective in reducing child work for pay and total work, increasing time girls spent on schooling and the highest grade completed by girls

Child-related Financial Transfers and Early Childhood Education and Care: A Review of Key Developments, Impacts and Influences in Child-related Support to Families

This paper examines policies for the support of families with children, in particular child-related financial transfers and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The analysis is mainly focused on countries with institutionalized welfare states -- primarily Western European and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries -- because that is where child-related benefits and services have the longest history. It focuses on the unfolding of the relevant transfers and services from the period of their inception in the early decades of the 20th century to the reforms that are currently underway. The paper highlights a number of core insights relevant to policy planning and decision-making for child-related transfers and ECEC services: Child-related financial transfers and ECEC services should not be seen as alternatives to each other, both are needed to provide continuous support across the life cycle. Children's needs and well-being should be at the forefront when these policies are designed and put in place. While this may appear self-evident, policies that are intended to meet several objectives can result in a situation where the needs of children are not at the heart of the measures that are assumed to benefit them. The paper also underlines the need for gender equality to be a frontline consideration in this (as in other) policy domains. This paper was produced for UN Women's flagship report Progress of the World's Women 2015-2016, and is released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series

The Global Child Labor Problem: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?

The problem of child labor has gone beyond being viewed as a matter of regional and intra-national concern to one of international debate and possible global 'persuasion' and policy intervention. It is argued in this paper that, in crafting policy for mitigating this enormous problem of our times, it is important to acquire a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the phenomenon. What gives rise to child labor and what are its consequences? What are the interventions that we can think of in order to end child labor without hurting children? A well-meaning but poorly designed policy can exacerbate the poverty that these laboring children face and even bring them to starvation. The present paper surveys the large and rapidly growing literature on this subject, focusing mainly on the new literature that uses the best of modern economic theory and econometrics. We then go on to discuss some of the broad policy implications of these new findings and hope that this will contribute to better-informed discussion and policy design in this area.